CELEBRATE!

Language Arte/Reading
The AR Celebration is this coming Thursday. We are having a popcorn/movie party. We can't wait for it to warm up so we can go back outside and play baseball again. The beginning of the Fifth Six Week grading period will start Tuesday, February 24, 2009.

This week we are reviewing our past months' skills during our reading selection. These include irregular verbs, prefixes and suffixes, words that are spelled the same but have different meanings, and making conclusions. The Literature selection is: Alejandro's Gift and the Living Desert.

Spelling Words for this week are as follows:
pair
unhurt
grinning
air
smiled
sadly
care
retell
babies
bear
unlike
cared
scare
hopeful
parties
pear
remake
chopped
bare
unhappy
joking
chair
friendly
carried
helper
farewell
flair
moving
libraries
silently

Math: The students will continue learning basic multiplication facts and placing them in our multiplication made easy booklet. We are also collecting data this week in order to construct pictographs, bargraphs, and problem solve.

Science:
We have started a new unit on Earth's Natural Resources. Some of the words you may want to talk to your child about are: renewable resources, natural resources, non-renewable resources, and inexhaustable resources.

Question of the Week. If it takes 30 minutes to prepare a batch of cookies and 22 minutes to bake the cookies and 10 minutes to cool the cookies, what time could you eat cookies if you started making them at 2:30 pm?

ONE WEEK LEFT FOR AR GOALS!!!

We hope you had a relaxing and enjoyable President's Day weekend and are ready to enjoy our week of learning ahead.

We want to welcome two wonderful ISU students to our classroom--Mrs. Fehringer and Mrs. Love. They have been very helpful with their skills and knowledge and we appreciate them assisting us in the classroom.

LANGUAGE ARTS:
Our students will begin a new story this week: Two Days in May by Harriet Peck Taylor, Illustrated by Leyla Torres. This is a wonderful about some white-tailed deer that are discovered in the city (quite a way from their natural habitat). What do you think might happen to them? We will read and find out.

Spelling List: (Words with prefixes and suffixes)
helper
unfair
friendly
unhappy
remake
careful
hopeful
unlike
retell
sadly
farmer
unhurt
have
said
unimportant
silently

*Research Paper deadline is due this Friday. Any papers turned in after this date will not receive full credit. These are some of the items we expect to be included in the report:

• Report (1-2 pages) Information about animal including appearance, where you can find it, its habitat and supported facts written in your own words.
• Neatness and good spelling (please skip every other line)
• A picture of your animal in its habitat (you draw and color).
• A title page (completed in class).
• An Inspiration Information Web (completed in class).
• Typed Fact Page with imported picture (completed in class).
• A page explaining what sources you used (source page).

AR GOAL for the fourth 6-weeks will end on Monday February 23, 2009. Keep on reading and continue to bring your reading log.

MATH:

We will continue to collect and record data using pictographs, line plots, and bar graphs. We have also began learning and memorizing our multiplication facts and are currently creating a multiplication booklet.

SCIENCE:

The students are beginning a new Unit on Earth's Natural Resources. There is a lot of reading involved. Pay attention--we will make it fun and interesting.

Question of the Week:

Tell me three different ways to make $4.86. Be creative!

Keep Collecting Facts!!

Technology, Technology, Technology...
This week for our Language Arts activities we will:

• Learn how to find a pre-copied picture that has been saved into a document. We will retreive this picture (copy) and insert it (paste) into our research document with five facts. We will manipulate the facts and the picture and center it in the document. When we are ready, we will save the document and then print it out so we can use it as part of our research assignment.
• Complete an Inspiration Web of information about our selected animal.
• Use the Promethean Board to discover facts about President George Washington and President Abraham Lincoln.
• Review five parts of an informal letter (then we will reply to our Pen Pals in Couer d'Alene, Idaho).

We Love Math---Keep saying it

We started learning basic multiplication rules last week and we will continue learning memory tricks to help us with our multiplication facts. Keep on Mathin'!

We also started our new unit on Data Collection: Use of graphs, tables, line plots, picture graphs, etc... This always seems to be a fun unit for the students. Keep up the good math work!!

Culmination of the ARCTIC UNIT

We will wrap up the Arctic Unit this Thursday and take an assessment on the information we have learned. Next week we will begin six-weeks of science--YIPEE!!

Spelling List for the week of February 9th-12th

• girl
• they
• want
• was
• into
• who
• our
• new
• would
• could
• a lot
• buy

UPCOMING EVENTS

• Class Pictures: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 (Dress Nicely)
• Valentine's Day Party: Thursday, February 12, 2009 (We will provide bags for the children)
• AR Goal Deadline: February 23, 2009 (Keep Reading)
• Professional Inservice Day: Friday, February 13, 2009--No School
• President's Day Holiday: Monday, February 16, 2009--Do something grand!
• RESEARCH REPORTS DUE: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Have a great week!

Lions and Tigers and Bears--OH MY!

Socks

This is Socks. Here are five facts about Socks. A fact is something that can be proved-a statement that is true.

1) Socks is fat.

2) Socks eats too much.

3) Socks is spoiled.

4) Socks sits of the couch and listens to my piano students at their lessons.

5) Socks is a Tabby Cat.

• Our required curricular Language Arts learning activity next week is writing a reasearch paper. Each student has selected an animal to research about and discover new information.The students have been working hard in class collecting facts off of the internet and typing them onto a fact sheet. They will be inserting a picture of their animal next week. Mrs. Shore and I will be sending home a "research paper" guide packet. Some of the work will be completed at school. The final copy will be "shined" up at home. The students have had a great time looking at their pictures and logging onto seaworld.org and wikipedia.org to look up information on their animal. Technology is alive and well in our classroom.
• Keep a heads up for the spelling words for next week. I will post them on Sunday evening.
• **New Question for the week: List five different synonyms for the word muddy. Good Luck!

The answer to the posted question last week (What are the names of the five great lakes in North America?) Lake Huron, Lake Ontario, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, and Lake Superior. I thinks of the word HOMES to help me remember these lakes.

Happy February

Our new story this week is about another interesting animal that loves the water.
Can you guess?? It is a seal. The story is Seal Surfer by Michael Foreman. The genre is realistic fiction. This story could really happen.

The spelling list are words that end with -ed and -ing:
cared
babies
chopped
saving
carried
fixing
hurried
joking
grinning
smiled
wrapped
parties

Challenge:
making
stopped
moving
libraries

We will also concentrate on identifying helping verbs and completing sentences using helping verbs. For example:
We have learned about young seals.

MATH
The students will review all information from the past unit on subtraction and addition and take a unit end assessment. Good vocabulary words to be familiar with are:
FACT
SUM
FACT FAMILY
REGROUP
ASSOCIATIVE PROPERTY
COMMUNTATIVE PROPERTY

Please start to review multiplication concepts through 5 x 10

SOCIAL STUDIES
Continue discussing the Arctic people, animals, customs, and way of life.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK:
What are the names of the five great lakes located in the United States?